Rama 3 and 4 are worse than 2? That must have taken some doing. RWR is one of my favorite Sci-Fi books, and the sequel was a horrible disappointment. If I was in charge of assembling a crack team for a one-chance visit to a spaceship that I knew would be passing through the solar system, I'd have picked a team with fewer personal problems, and some actual skills...
That 100% thing puzzles me. I mean, they must/know/ what it looks like. Surely 90+% would be more credible (at the very least, it wouldn't be/instantly/ unbelieveable) and show that Saddam is a benevolent father of the nation, or whatever shit he's trying to pull. Claiming 100% just makes it instantly obvious that there were no other candidates.
Plus, are they claiming that 100% of the people voted? Because that's even more insane. Did the people in jail vote? Did the people undergoing surgery vote? Did the people who died in traffic accidents on the way to the polls vote?
It's really not that much better here in the UK. We have three main parties (actually more like 2.5, but I'll get to that.)
The Labour party are currently in power, they're easily the most professional politicians (read that as you will), and they're going to be in power forever, because the opposition is so hopeless. They're also big fans of big business, "streamlining" the justice system and good suits. They're also hopelessly corrupt in a million small, depressing ways that make you wonder how they maintain any self-respect. But hey, they "care", so it's alright.
The reason the Labour party is going to be in power forever is, the Conservative party. They got beaten (demolished) in 1997, and they seem to have become less credible with every passing year. The reason that they got trashed in '97 was their corruption (real honest-to-god cash for favours stuff), unbearable arrogance and sheer incompetance. Since then, they've had two near-identical leaders who've spent most of their time playing right-wing catchup with the government and missing opportunities to/actually oppose/ things. They have at least finally managed to ditch all the old ex-ministers they had, which considering they were some of the most hated men in the country, was probably a sensible move.
And the.5 party, the Liberal Democrats. Don't have that many suppporters, too close to the government on a lot of things, no doubt all funded by arms companies and crooked businessmen. Unlikely to win a general election. Still, some of their stuff appeals to naive knee-jerk liberals like me, and I have a Liberal Democrat MP because of that. They were also honest at least once when they pointed out that better services require more money, as opposed to mythical "efficiency savings" made by selling public utilities to large companies for fire sale prices and then paying whatever they ask for to keep them running.
I'm going to get modded to death for this, but someone has to say it...
Windows isn't/that/ bad as a product. For a huge chunk of the user population (not just the usual BS "Word and E-mail" comparisons) it's a damn good choice. If you want to play the majority of new games, you pretty well need Windows, if you want to use some classes of applications (3d software is the one that affects me) then you need Windows, if you want to use the majority of off-the-shelf hardware easily, then you need Windows. It's also nowhere near as unstable as/.'ers claim, and pre-XP, the licensing isn't that evil.
I'm not going to buy XP, because I loathe M$ as a company. So at some point I'm going to be moving, but I doubt it'll be towards proprietry hardware or pretty translucent cases where I can't even change the video card.
This is the problem with censorship nowadays, they're too damn cunning.
In the past, censorship enthusiasts* were dumb, and banned works of art, stuff that people could defend on quality grounds, stuff that people would get/angry/ about not being able to obtain. Who the fuck would go through a world of trouble to get this thing available in stores?
I hate censorship, but can I actually be bothered to complain about reduced distribution for an "extreme" sports game featuring hookers? (two/seriously/ overused themes in modern games) So when they want to ban the next Thief or Deus Ex for "encouraging criminal activity" it'll be that much harder to stop them.
*I know that Walmart not selling != censored, but you have to consider the size of the company and the number of games they shift. When multi-billion dollar companies refuse to have anything to do with controversial and "anti-social" games then it's not long until we're all playing "The Happy Little Elves(tm)(c) go to Disneyland(tm)(r)" and "DMCA Takedown: Piracy Bust".
This stuff can be slightly confusing, as there are huge differences, legally speaking, between making/using hardware to modify consoles, and making software mods (additional levels, art etc) for PC games.
Mod chips are not popular with console companies. At all. The huge majority of them (based on my personal knowledge) are used for either piracy (obviously illegal) or playing import games (legal, but annoying to console companies that like to operate region coding systems. And yes, regioning sucks.) People who buy mod chips for other reasons (are there any apart from running Linux and homebrew gaming?) are not contributing much to the normal revenue stream, and might even be competing with it (producing cheap or freeware games and utilities. This becomes more of an issue when you start adding HDs and broadband connections).
Game mods, on the other hand, are great for the developers and publishers, they get lots of free (or nearly free, producing an SDK and doing a bit of patching) content and press, and guess what, everyone who plays them needs a copy of the game. Part of the reason that game mods are so good for the developers is that they have a lot of control. Read the license agreement on the SDK, they own any content you distribute for their game. Produce something offensive (or outrageously profitable), and they can take it all away from you. Obviously this would be a world of bad publicity, but they can still do it.
What would be nice for consoles is to
A)Throw away the regioning B)Seperate the protection of copyrighted disks from the ability to read CD-Rs and unsigned code, both of which are pretty much essential for home development. C)Produce a really cheap/free dev kit, possibly with some restrictions (ie, game can only be distributed for free or through console makers publishers). I have no idea how much they make through selling dev kits
This would get the benefits of PC game style mods and allow them to reduce piracy by drawing a clear line between enthusiasts and pirates (yes, they're often the same people, but it seperates the behaviour), making piracy less generally accepted and easier to attack legally.
Of course, when do that, people want more freedom, more customisablity etc, and pretty soon you end up with a PC (or at least an Atari/Amiga style "home computer")...
This is almost as good as the Mohammed Al-Fayed VS Neil Hamilton libel case we had here (.uk) a few years ago. General opinion seemed to be "Shame they can't both lose".
That time it was Al-Fayed, who had an interestingpast (and the worst decorated shop in central London), even before accusing MI6 and the Royal family of murdering his son (which, oddly enough, cost Harrods one of their royal warrants), and being sued for libel by Neil Hamilton, after Al-Fayed claimed he took bribes to ask questions in Parliment.
Hamilton lost and had to pay a big settlement before going to prison. Al-Fayed won, but I don't think telling a court that he bribed MPs was particularly helpful in his endless quest for British citizenship
Don't suppose anyone knows if the Bank of Commerce and Credit International was/is related to the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (AKA Bank of Cocaine and Conmen International)?
Still, sounds like they're upholding the proud tradition.
The thing about Swordfish is that the hacking bits aren't the bad point. Oh, I know they're iffy (check out the decryption "algorhythm" in the background), but the things that make Swordfish suck are the insane plot (how can we write a "tech" move and have badly done action scenes in the same movie? I know, lets just tape two different plots together in the middle!) and John Travolta's near-Battlefield-Earth standard of acting.
Actually, to be honest, the worst thing about it is the director's commentry on the DVD. They think it was clever. And that Travolta's character had depth...
Yeah, I think early laser systems will be for killing aircraft. Very high speeds and relatively low power makes a great A2A weapon, but a less effective tank/IFV/building killer.
Plus, lasers are massively more effective up high. How effective would a ground based laser be in a sandstorm? Or when it rains? Or when something's burning nearby (not unheard of in warfare)?
I'm not really sure about this particular type, but my "Space Warfare and Strategic Defense" says
"The early lasers produced several thousand watts of power and had a power density on the order of 10,000 watts per 1/3rd of a square inch. Hard to believe as it is, this power density is greater than the intensity of light at the surface of the sun." So a 100KW version should be pretty effective, at least up high where there isn't much smoke, dust or water vapour
I doubt this thing would kill vehicles very effectively, especially tanks (laminate armour a foot thick takes a lot of piercing), but planes and missiles are pretty flimsy and full of fuel, electronics and high explosives.
"Heat is the major enemy of speed. Caused by the friction of cutting through the air, heat has limited the top speed of modern aircraft (such as the F-15) far more than power. Beyond Mach 2.5, friction increases at an ever-growing rate (for comparison, an SR-71 operating at Mach 2.2 heats up to about 275 degrees, but at Mach 3.2, skin temperatures rise to almost 900 degrees!). The same aerodynamics that gave the XB-70 so little drag helped minimize heat buildup. The hottest portions of the Valkyrie, her nose and horizontal splitter, reached a temperature of only 625 degrees during Mach 3 flight, with the majority of the XB-70s skin at a temperature of just 450 degrees! Equipment was placed in the fuel tanks, which acted as heat sinks. As the fuel soaked up the heat from the fuselage, it was drawn into the engines and burned away, leaving the cooler fuel behind. At the same time, it had to be replaced with nitrogen gas. The temperatures inside the tanks were high enough that just two percent oxygen would have caused the fuel to burst into flames -- a decidedly undesirable event."
"One data network that's for the birds. Lockheed Missile and Space Company needed to transmit lots of computer data from it's Sunnyvale, California, office to it's R&D facility high in the Santa Cruz mountains. The company used both telephone transmissions of computer-to-computer data (very expensive) and physical transport of printouts, an all-day mountain-road affair that wipes out shocks and springs. Finally the company experimented with a truly advanced network that cut costs to a tenth of what they were before.
Carrier pigeons now fly microfilm of the data between the mountains and Sunnyvale. One bird a day about does it."
I'd love to know A)If this is true, and B)How much data they were moving.
Slashdot Mirror
Rama 3 and 4 are worse than 2? That must have taken some doing. RWR is one of my favorite Sci-Fi books, and the sequel was a horrible disappointment. If I was in charge of assembling a crack team for a one-chance visit to a spaceship that I knew would be passing through the solar system, I'd have picked a team with fewer personal problems, and some actual skills...
That 100% thing puzzles me. I mean, they must /know/ what it looks like. Surely 90+% would be more credible (at the very least, it wouldn't be /instantly/ unbelieveable) and show that Saddam is a benevolent father of the nation, or whatever shit he's trying to pull. Claiming 100% just makes it instantly obvious that there were no other candidates.
Plus, are they claiming that 100% of the people voted? Because that's even more insane. Did the people in jail vote? Did the people undergoing surgery vote? Did the people who died in traffic accidents on the way to the polls vote?
They have a lot to learn about fixing elections.
It's really not that much better here in the UK. We have three main parties (actually more like 2.5, but I'll get to that.)
/actually oppose/ things. They have at least finally managed to ditch all the old ex-ministers they had, which considering they were some of the most hated men in the country, was probably a sensible move.
.5 party, the Liberal Democrats. Don't have that many suppporters, too close to the government on a lot of things, no doubt all funded by arms companies and crooked businessmen. Unlikely to win a general election. Still, some of their stuff appeals to naive knee-jerk liberals like me, and I have a Liberal Democrat MP because of that. They were also honest at least once when they pointed out that better services require more money, as opposed to mythical "efficiency savings" made by selling public utilities to large companies for fire sale prices and then paying whatever they ask for to keep them running.
The Labour party are currently in power, they're easily the most professional politicians (read that as you will), and they're going to be in power forever, because the opposition is so hopeless. They're also big fans of big business, "streamlining" the justice system and good suits. They're also hopelessly corrupt in a million small, depressing ways that make you wonder how they maintain any self-respect. But hey, they "care", so it's alright.
The reason the Labour party is going to be in power forever is, the Conservative party. They got beaten (demolished) in 1997, and they seem to have become less credible with every passing year. The reason that they got trashed in '97 was their corruption (real honest-to-god cash for favours stuff), unbearable arrogance and sheer incompetance. Since then, they've had two near-identical leaders who've spent most of their time playing right-wing catchup with the government and missing opportunities to
And the
'Fingertip to eyeball security.' ? Sounds pretty low tech to me...
*POKE*
"Arrgh! I'm blind!"
"He won't be sharing any more images"
All they need now is 'Palm-to-eardrum' security, and they can wipe out MP3 sharing too.
I'm going to get modded to death for this, but someone has to say it...
/that/ bad as a product. For a huge chunk of the user population (not just the usual BS "Word and E-mail" comparisons) it's a damn good choice. If you want to play the majority of new games, you pretty well need Windows, if you want to use some classes of applications (3d software is the one that affects me) then you need Windows, if you want to use the majority of off-the-shelf hardware easily, then you need Windows. It's also nowhere near as unstable as /.'ers claim, and pre-XP, the licensing isn't that evil.
Windows isn't
I'm not going to buy XP, because I loathe M$ as a company. So at some point I'm going to be moving, but I doubt it'll be towards proprietry hardware or pretty translucent cases where I can't even change the video card.
This is the problem with censorship nowadays, they're too damn cunning.
/angry/ about not being able to obtain. Who the fuck would go through a world of trouble to get this thing available in stores?
/seriously/ overused themes in modern games) So when they want to ban the next Thief or Deus Ex for "encouraging criminal activity" it'll be that much harder to stop them.
In the past, censorship enthusiasts* were dumb, and banned works of art, stuff that people could defend on quality grounds, stuff that people would get
I hate censorship, but can I actually be bothered to complain about reduced distribution for an "extreme" sports game featuring hookers? (two
*I know that Walmart not selling != censored, but you have to consider the size of the company and the number of games they shift. When multi-billion dollar companies refuse to have anything to do with controversial and "anti-social" games then it's not long until we're all playing "The Happy Little Elves(tm)(c) go to Disneyland(tm)(r)" and "DMCA Takedown: Piracy Bust".
This stuff can be slightly confusing, as there are huge differences, legally speaking, between making/using hardware to modify consoles, and making software mods (additional levels, art etc) for PC games.
Mod chips are not popular with console companies. At all. The huge majority of them (based on my personal knowledge) are used for either piracy (obviously illegal) or playing import games (legal, but annoying to console companies that like to operate region coding systems. And yes, regioning sucks.) People who buy mod chips for other reasons (are there any apart from running Linux and homebrew gaming?) are not contributing much to the normal revenue stream, and might even be competing with it (producing cheap or freeware games and utilities. This becomes more of an issue when you start adding HDs and broadband connections).
Game mods, on the other hand, are great for the developers and publishers, they get lots of free (or nearly free, producing an SDK and doing a bit of patching) content and press, and guess what, everyone who plays them needs a copy of the game. Part of the reason that game mods are so good for the developers is that they have a lot of control. Read the license agreement on the SDK, they own any content you distribute for their game. Produce something offensive (or outrageously profitable), and they can take it all away from you. Obviously this would be a world of bad publicity, but they can still do it.
What would be nice for consoles is to
A)Throw away the regioning
B)Seperate the protection of copyrighted disks from the ability to read CD-Rs and unsigned code, both of which are pretty much essential for home development.
C)Produce a really cheap/free dev kit, possibly with some restrictions (ie, game can only be distributed for free or through console makers publishers). I have no idea how much they make through selling dev kits
This would get the benefits of PC game style mods and allow them to reduce piracy by drawing a clear line between enthusiasts and pirates (yes, they're often the same people, but it seperates the behaviour), making piracy less generally accepted and easier to attack legally.
Of course, when do that, people want more freedom, more customisablity etc, and pretty soon you end up with a PC (or at least an Atari/Amiga style "home computer")...
Obviously, only thieves buy digital technologies. After all, terrorists use digital devices. And aren't all EVIL MUSIC* THIEVES terrorists at heart?
Hey, if my logic was any worse, I could run for president.
*And video, obviously.
This is almost as good as the Mohammed Al-Fayed VS Neil Hamilton libel case we had here (.uk) a few years ago. General opinion seemed to be "Shame they can't both lose".
That time it was Al-Fayed, who had an interesting past (and the worst decorated shop in central London), even before accusing MI6 and the Royal family of murdering his son (which, oddly enough, cost Harrods one of their royal warrants), and being sued for libel by Neil Hamilton, after Al-Fayed claimed he took bribes to ask questions in Parliment.
Hamilton lost and had to pay a big settlement before going to prison. Al-Fayed won, but I don't think telling a court that he bribed MPs was particularly helpful in his endless quest for British citizenship
So no-one really won
Don't suppose anyone knows if the Bank of Commerce and Credit International was/is related to the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (AKA Bank of Cocaine and Conmen International)?
Still, sounds like they're upholding the proud tradition.
The thing about Swordfish is that the hacking bits aren't the bad point. Oh, I know they're iffy (check out the decryption "algorhythm" in the background), but the things that make Swordfish suck are the insane plot (how can we write a "tech" move and have badly done action scenes in the same movie? I know, lets just tape two different plots together in the middle!) and John Travolta's near-Battlefield-Earth standard of acting.
Actually, to be honest, the worst thing about it is the director's commentry on the DVD. They think it was clever. And that Travolta's character had depth...
At least Antitrust had Rachel Leigh Cook...
So getting 120bhp/litre and a 9000rpm redline out of a two litre four cylinder engine has no geek appeal? How about inventing variable valve timing?
Yeah, I think early laser systems will be for killing aircraft. Very high speeds and relatively low power makes a great A2A weapon, but a less effective tank/IFV/building killer.
Plus, lasers are massively more effective up high. How effective would a ground based laser be in a sandstorm? Or when it rains? Or when something's burning nearby (not unheard of in warfare)?
And Anti-Ballistic Missile systems. But they wouldn't back out of that one, would they? Waitasecond...
I'm not really sure about this particular type, but my "Space Warfare and Strategic Defense" says
"The early lasers produced several thousand watts of power and had a power density on the order of 10,000 watts per 1/3rd of a square inch. Hard to believe as it is, this power density is greater than the intensity of light at the surface of the sun."
So a 100KW version should be pretty effective, at least up high where there isn't much smoke, dust or water vapour
I doubt this thing would kill vehicles very effectively, especially tanks (laminate armour a foot thick takes a lot of piercing), but planes and missiles are pretty flimsy and full of fuel, electronics and high explosives.
MIRACL (2.2MW) VS a Titan missile body
Same thing with the XB70 Valkyrie The Great White Bird
"Heat is the major enemy of speed. Caused by the friction of cutting through the air, heat has limited the top speed of modern aircraft (such as the F-15) far more than power. Beyond Mach 2.5, friction increases at an ever-growing rate (for comparison, an SR-71 operating at Mach 2.2 heats up to about 275 degrees, but at Mach 3.2, skin temperatures rise to almost 900 degrees!). The same aerodynamics that gave the XB-70 so little drag helped minimize heat buildup. The hottest portions of the Valkyrie, her nose and horizontal splitter, reached a temperature of only 625 degrees during Mach 3 flight, with the majority of the XB-70s skin at a temperature of just 450 degrees! Equipment was placed in the fuel tanks, which acted as heat sinks. As the fuel soaked up the heat from the fuselage, it was drawn into the engines and burned away, leaving the cooler fuel behind. At the same time, it had to be replaced with nitrogen gas. The temperatures inside the tanks were high enough that just two percent oxygen would have caused the fuel to burst into flames -- a decidedly undesirable event."
Just 450 degrees?
I can play my GameCube on my 57inch HDTV in 720p
It might be a fairer comparison if you rolled the price of the $2000 TV into it.
From "The Naked Computer"
"One data network that's for the birds. Lockheed Missile and Space Company needed to transmit lots of computer data from it's Sunnyvale, California, office to it's R&D facility high in the Santa Cruz mountains. The company used both telephone transmissions of computer-to-computer data (very expensive) and physical transport of printouts, an all-day mountain-road affair that wipes out shocks and springs. Finally the company experimented with a truly advanced network that cut costs to a tenth of what they were before.
Carrier pigeons now fly microfilm of the data between the mountains and Sunnyvale. One bird a day about does it."
I'd love to know A)If this is true, and B)How much data they were moving.